Weekly Review

Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona!

So, I’m here at the Tucson airport with a few hours to kill, and it seems like an excellent opportunity to catch up on some writing. 

Spending the last 10 days in Tucson playing golf and enjoying the constant warm/hot weather has been nice, but I’m ready to get out of the heat.  I can’t complain about the tan I’ve picked up during that time though. 

And it was nice to hang with my cousin (Ryan), sister (Stacy)… and her fiance (Luke)…. and keep my work load to a small amount.

We got 4 rounds of 18 holes in at El Rio, Randolph, Vistoso, and Starr Pass.  Vistoso and Starr Pass take the cake on both challenge and condition of the courses… but I played and scored just as well on the tougher courses as I did on the others (go figure).  I think if I played more often, I might be able to get my handicap down near 10.  (that’s 10 over par for anyone confused)
In addition to lots of time on the course, we had a few pick-up games on the backyard putting green.

I’m looking forward to being back home with Les and the Dogs.  Tonight we’re heading out to The Melting Pot for dinner.  It will be my first fondue experience… looking forward to it.

Then it’s back to the routine.  I need to get back in the gym soon.  I was able to get a few good runs in this week, but never found time to get to a gym and keep up my workouts.
I don’t think I’ve slipped too much though.  The only fried food I remember eating were french fries at the D-Backs game last night.

Most of my week, I documented through my newest web 2.0 fixation… Brightkite.com.  It’s a social networking site similar to Facebook and Myspace… except it’s location based.  So you “check-in” at the different locations you find yourself in.. and from there, post comments and photos about what your doing there.  Example: (Me explaining Brightkite to Ryan)
So, yeah… I’m kinda hooked on it.  It also ties in to Twitter, so everytime I post something to Brightkite… it updates my Twitter account, which in turn updates my website.  I’m starting to think I may be a little too connected (it’s the iPhone’s fault).  By the way, if you find yourself a bit hooked to constantly updating your status on Facebook… you should try out twitter.  It’s basically the same thing, but on a much broader scale.. and you can update your status via IM or SMS(text).  It will also automatically update your Facebook profile with the same status (at the time of this post, that feature has stopped working for some reason).
Here is my Brightkite page where you can see all of my check-ins and photo postings.  The site is in Beta right now, so signing up is by invite only.  If you are interested, shoot me an email and we’ll get you signed up.  Caution.. you may become extremely obsessed with it (like me).

Some of the events I posted on were.. various golf courses, dinner, trip to Mexico, Diamondback vs. Tigers game.  If you can take pictures with your phone and email them… it’s extremely simple to to get hooked on this dude.

Spring Break 2008

Yeah, I know… I’m not in school any more and Spring Break technically doesn’t apply to me, but as long as I have family and friends that still get to have that week long break at the end of Winter… It won’t take much to convince me to take off a little time from work to go play also.Although, it’s hard to feel much like a vacation when you don’t leave the state, having guests out to play in the mountains and take part in all of the other great activities Colorado has to offer is still a great time!

The first event we started with was the Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival in Nederland. According to legend, there is a frozen dead dude in someone’s garage or something in Nederland, so every year they have this weekend-long festival to honor Mr. Popsicle. We checked out the main coffin races for a little bit, but took off to go get some beer down our necks and some fried Mac-N-Cheese in our bellies.

Dustin chose to cut his teeth with snowboarding in one of the greatest places… Colorado. We only went 2 of the 7 days he was here, but I think it was probably enough for him to get hooked on it, like me. Our first day out we hit up Breckenridge. From my experience, it’s one of the places to start. It’s a very family oriented mountain with tons of beginners to help boost your broken ego from spending half the day on your ass. But it didn’t take him long to graduate from the bunny slope and hit the main lift toward the top of the bigger runs. In no time we were heading down the green and blue runs. Not necessarily at break-neck speeds… but slow and steady wins the race… especially when you are just learning the snowboard. There’s nothing worse than that knot in your stomach that shows up suddenly when you realize you are going entirely to fast and have no way of stopping without running in to someone or something… or just dropping to the snow and hope for the best. Still, that feeling is kind of what you’re after (at some point). It’s similar to the feeling you get on the first big drop of a roller coaster. It’s the thrill seeker’s drug of choice. And I love it!As Dustin can now attest to, snowboarding is one of the most demanding and physically challenging hobbies to pick up. After just a few hours, he was pretty wiped out. It had been a long day for both he and the dogs.

Outside of snowboarding a few days, we spent the rest of the week checking out a lot of the local breweries. The first visit was the biggest and most well known… Coors.On the Coors brewery, they take you through a small portion of the plant and explain (more or less) how beer is made. You get a little history on Adolph Coors and the company. They give you a small sample of either Coors Original or Coors Light right after it has become a finished product (as fresh as you’ll ever taste it). Then at the end of the tour, you get to sample 3 of the beers that they brew. All in all, it’s not the best brewery tour, but the magnitude in which they brew and the shear scale and volume that they pump out is pretty amazing. The 3 free beers at the end of the tour is nice too…. and all of it is absolutely free. So, when you’ve got an hour to kill, I can’t think of too many better options. Plus, Golden is where we lived at the time so it’s just down the road.

Afterwards, we drove in to downtown Denver and checked out one of my local favs (not available outside of their building)… The Wynkoop. Their cask-conditioned Monkey’s Fist IPA is delicious.From there, we drove back to Boulder and had dinner (and some more delicious brewskis) at another one of my favs … The Souther Sun. Their XXX IPA is definitely in my top 5 local beers. Very tasty, very hoppy, very strong… and just all around, very good.

Later in the week, we finally got some hiking in. The weather was great the entire time Dustin was here. On average I’d say it was in the low to mid 60’s just about every day. The day we went for a short hike was no different. Leslie’s brother (Stephen) and his girlfriend (Tiffanie) were also in town for their Spring Break, so we had a nice little crew with us when we started off to hike the 1st Flat Iron. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it all the way to the top because of some lingering snow and ice in areas towards the top… but it was nice to get out and get some air and exercise. The altitude got to the visiting Indiana people though and so it took a little longer to get where we were going, but that’s alright. Nanook was enjoying the breaks we made to catch our breaths. That dog loves to eat snow.After the hike, we went to check out a couple more breweries… Boulder Brewing Company (home of the great Hazed & Infused) and Avery. Avery, unfortunately was closed for some reason, but there was a sweet Delorian in the parking lot. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those in person.

Boulder Brewing Company was open for business so we stopped in there and had a couple of their finest brews and a heaping plate of nachos. Aside from Hazed & Infused… the other popular one they make is the Mojo. It’s their IPA, where as the Hazed is just a dry-hopped ale (but sorta tastes like an IPA). However, they have another version of the Mojo Called Mojo Risen, which is only available at the brewery. It is a double IPA and comes in at 9% ABV. It’s a very smooth IPA unlike most and the extra alcohol content can put you where you need to be real quick like. Their Never Summer Ale is another good one they serve up too, but it’s only available during the Winter months.From there, we headed north to Fort Collins and to the Holy Grail of beer lovers… New Belgium Brewery. You really can’t come to Colorado as a beer lover and not insist on visiting this brewery. Their Fat Tire (Amber Ale) is where a lot of people get their first taste in to fine crafted beers. But you’ll quickly find out… as good as Fat Tire is… it’s just a jumping point and the tip of the iceberg to all of the other delicious concoctions they have available.

The last day of Dustin’s trip we decided to forgoe watching both IU and Purdue possibly embarrass themselves in the Big Ten tournament and went to check out our local NBA D-League team, the Colorado 14er’s. They play at the nearby Broomfield event center, and as you can see… for a measly $20 you can’t get much closer to the court. The D-League pretty much consists entirely of players that their NBA counter-part teams drafted, but didn’t feel like they were quite ready for the big leagues. So instead, they play on a much smaller scale, but still work just as hard or harder. The game ended up being pretty close. It was against the Los Angeles D-Fenders (the Lakers dev team), but in the end, the 14er’s lost.After the game, we drove in to Boulder and had some dinner at Old Chicago’s and then headed home. That pretty much wrapped up the week. It was a good time and I was happy to be able to spend some time with my cousin Dustin. We haven’t been able to hang out much now that he’s 21. I think he might have taken a liking to Colorado… so watch out family. There may be more ship jumpers soon!

Mother Nature, you tease!

Saturday, March 1st 2008 will go down as the warmest day in history for the Denver/Boulder area, but the weather that followed less than 24 hours later was downright cruel…. unfair… and annoying!

This time of the year, it’s not uncommon for us to have a streak of really warm days (mid 60’s), followed by a little snow, but when I woke up to 6 inches of snow after yesterday’s beautiful weather… it was a bit upsetting. That’s Colorado for you!

With the warm weather, we were able to get outside and enjoy the day in just shorts and t-shirts and be perfectly comfortable. We haven’t been able to do that since early November I think. So, we took advantage and took the dogs for a long walk and washed Leslie’s Jeep.

Later that night we enjoyed several Margaritas and watched a couple classic movies, one of which was a childhood favorite of mine that I haven’t seen in many years…. Disney’s “The Black Hole”.

For some reason, I remember this movie being a bit “darker”, and the evil robot Maximillian scared me a lot more back in those days. Movie making has come along way since 1979, and I found myself giggling at the “special effects” several times, but overall it’s still a classic, and definitely one to own.

It had been somewhat of a long week, so a quiet night at home on a Saturday was welcomed.

My cousin Bruce had been in town for 2 back to back days to go skiing. We hit up Breckenridge on the first day and Vail the 2nd. It was great hanging out with the cuz during our yearly ski adventure. Actually, he skied and I snowboarded, but you get the point.


(Early morning drive to the airport)Last weekend was an interesting one as well. We checked out a nearby motocross track and did a little “filming” of the riders.

Being around the bikes reminded me of my “good ole days” racing stock cars back in Indianapolis.
The smell of burning high octane fuel and the screaming motors took me back, gave me a big smile.

The following day we took the dogs for a hike at nearby open space, but the trails were extremely muddy due to all of the snowmelt we have had lately.

It was a brief hike (because of the muddy conditions) but it was nice to be out and the dogs appreciated the exercise. Nanook got a little spooked by some of the horses we passed on the trails. It’s not too often he encounters another animal larger than him.

Afterwards, we headed over to the south side of town to visit with a buddy and check out his House Flip Project. The house looked amazing and was a huge improvement of the state the house was in when he and another friend purchased it.

That’s all for this post.

Let’s Play Catch….. up!

Yeah, I’ve been a little lazy on my writings lately, so here’s an attempt at catching up on the last couple of weeks.

Where to start?
I guess I’ll throw a vinyl on the record player, grab a cold brewski (not the dog) and settle in for some serious typing…

In an earlier post, I already mentioned Leslie’s Birthday (Happy Birthday to choo!), well part of her birthday gift wasn’t mentioned!
I promised to arrange for a professional photo shoot and put together a portfolio for her.
But then after thinking about it more… why spend a couple hundred dollars on a photo shoot that lasts only a few hours, when I can take all of the pictures myself… whenever we want… as often as we like. I have a lot of the same equipment a pro would use, and we could use the money we would have spent on the photographer on wardrobe and props! So that’s exactly what we did.

So far we’ve taken several hundred pictures, but I’ve only had time to go back and edit a few. Here is our favorite so far.
We were going for an “old timey” look. Classic!

Look for more to come soon.

I also created a blog site (like this one) for her to write in, but so far it’s fairly empty.

I feel like there should be plenty to write about since the last post, but honestly it’s been pretty boring around here the last couple of weeks.
A majority of our free time has been spent searching for a new place to live. Living up here at 9,000 feet has been great, but we are ready to get back down to civilization. The 1 hour round trip drive to get a gallon of milk has lost it’s charm!
We’ve looked all over! Why is it sooooo hard to find a house to rent that doesn’t cost $2000 a month? And why is it, that the places we do find in our budget don’t allow pets? And why is it that the places we do find, in our budget, that allow pets… view the Alaskan Malamute as an aggressive breed and therefore won’t rent to us? It’s really frustrating.
And the bum deal about the whole thing is that we are ready to buy a house rather than rent. We’ve been pre-approved for a decent mortgage and everything, yet don’t have the $$$$ for a down payment that would make the mortgage feasible. Anyone have any suggestions on how to come up with $15,000 quick and easy? So, we’ll just continue to rent for now, and hope our finances somehow break through!

During the nights… we’ve had lots of opportunities to catch up on our movie watching. One of my last posts talked about “You, Me, and Everyone We Know”. That is a great flick that everyone should make time to watch, but I’ve got another couple movies that I’ve got to give props to. We’ve kinda been on this “Documentary” kick lately. I’m not sure what started it, but here are 2 that you need to rent soon.
1. Air Guitar Nation

The movie is a true story documenting the first ever Air Guitar contest.
Pretty much the whole thing is about this guy from the east coast (New York I think) named C. Diddy!
He beats out another guy who goes by the name of Bjorn Turoque (pronounced like “Born To Rock!”).
So Bjorn gets beat in the New York competition but gets Carson Daily to pay for him to fly to L.A. to compete again and hopefully win the title of “Nation’s Best Air Guitarist”.
He of course loses to C. Diddy again.

After the National Championship C. Diddy travels to Finland for the World Championships. And who finds a way to the competition as well? Bjorn Turoque!
And guess what… he loses… again. It’s a crushing blow to his ego and… well life!

That’s about it really! It’s amazing how serious these guys are about their air guitar. The funny thing is… they really aren’t that good. It’s compared to an art form such as ballet or figure skating, where the competitor has choreographed routines to music. However, they aren’t very well thought up or performed. I think if this “art form” ever really took off, the so-called “innovators” and people like C. Diddy and Bjorn who were the first ones to start it all… will be put to shame!
Anyway, it’s good for a laugh! It’s fun to see how crazy people can be out there!
Speaking of CRAZY!… the next movie takes the cake.

2. The King of Kong: A Fistul of Quarters

I don’t even know where to begin with this one.
Some of my favorite movies are the Christopher Guest’s “Best In Show”, “A Mighty Wind”, “For Your Consideration”, etc.
This movie feels like one of his flicks… but it’s totally real!
Every person in the movie is real. The whole thing about this competition to be the best Donkey Kong player on the planet is ALL REAL!

I really can’t do the movie any justice by trying to explain it here, and I definitely don’t want to reveal any spoilers. You need to just rent it and see for yourself.

All I can say, is that I had to question just about everything I encountered afterwards. It totally screwed with my mind. To believe that these people are real and that the events that take place during the movie are real… just blew my mind!

After watching the movie, I turned on the John Stewart show and he had the Governor of New York on as a guest. I swear to you I actually believed that there was NO WAY that man was the Governor. I can’t explain it. My mind just didn’t want to believe it for some reason. This side effect continued pretty much the rest of the night. I don’t know how to explain it. Just see it, and you’ll understand!

Another movie I watched recently was one I took the time to see in the theaters

3: Across the Universe

Anyone that is a fan of The Beatles MUST SEE this movie.
It is a musical, and to be honest… when I saw it in the theaters, I almost walked out within the first 5 minutes.
I’m glad I didn’t, and for some reason… I didn’t have that same feeling seeing it the second time around.

Some of the characters get on my nerves (Sadie), but for the most part, I enjoyed the whole thing. This one is definitely a DVD worth purchasing. I can see myself watching it again and again. Several cameo appearances by Bono and Eddie Izzard were cool too.

Let’s see… what else is new?
We’ve had a couple of decent snow falls recently. None of them have been too much, or at least so much that getting in and out of our driveway has become a problem.
However, what happens almost every time we get snow, is that we’ll get a full day and night of heavy winds. Down in the frontrange, these Chinook winds (Eskimo for Snow Eater) melt all the snow. But up here, all that wind does is blow the snow around… and every time it creates drifts over our driveway that make it pretty much impassible.

The last time our driveway got in this shape, we invited friends and family up to help dig a path for our jeeps to get out. For their hard work, I supplied some delicious chili and whiskey to warm us all up.

This time around… I decided to go ahead and just pay to have a plow truck come through and clear it out. It was much easier on my back, but harder on my wallet!
However, $98 later I can see portions of my driveway that have been hidden by snow since December. We’ve also got a 9 foot wall of snow that dogs (and me) love to climb and play on now!

Last weekend we went to visit Leslie’s Dad (Mike) as he and his roommates were having a bonfire party.

It was good to get out of the house. Mike cooked up some porterhouse steaks on the grill and they were quite delish! Didn’t stay long. Had to take off when the hippies started breaking out in to song

No, actually… we just needed to get back to the dogs. They had been alone for about 7 hours and usually in that amount of time Nanook finds something to make a mess of. This particular time was no different!

Another thing I’ve recently been working on are some home videos. I created a YouTube account and started posting some of my work.
Check them out when you get a chance, and let me know what you think.
–
–Valentine’s Day!
To celebrate V-Day we went out on an old fashioned “dinner and a movie” date.
Had some delicious Grub at Gordon Beirsch, followed with Juno at the movie theater across the way.
I thought Juno was going to be funnier, but it was a good movie. Definitely a happy ending, and the whole thing was….
well, cute! That’s the best word to describe it. There were a couple of uncomfortable parts with Jason Bateman’s character and Juno, but otherwise it was an easy watch.

I think I’m caught up now.
The hunt for a new place to live still continues.
The weather lately has been awesome. Temperatures have been in the high 40’s and the sun as as hot as ever!
We’ve got some visitors lined up to come out and do some skiing and snowboarding in the next couple of weeks, so that should be exciting.
All-in-all, things are good!

Happy Birthday to…. choo!

Happy Birthday to you… Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday dear Leslie…. Happy Birthday to choo!

Ahhhh… to be 25 again. I remember it like it was yesterday. The 1/4-Century mark!
The good news is (or bad depending on your optimism), that there’s very little difference between 25 and 31 years old. I don’t feel any different today then I did 6 years ago. In fact, I don’t feel much different than when I was 21, with the exception of a little less desire to go out and party as often.

Woke up early this morning with the intention of making Les breakfast in bed, but she got up at the same time I did… so we stuck with breakfast at the table! My first attempt (EVER) at French Toast turned out pretty good. The extra shake of cinnamon and sugar on top is the key!

Afterwards, I gave her 1 of her birthday gifts… a new coat! Yay for coats! Could have used it last night while we were sleeping. For some uncool reason, the furnace decided not to work. I think it got down to around 50 degrees inside, which doesn’t sound cold, but trust me… it is at the very least…. uncomfortable to try and sleep when it’s like that.
So, I got up and plugged in our little space heater, but of course… this old rickity cabin can’t always handle the electrical load of a small space heater. Consequently, the circuit breaker tripped, and I had to get back out of bed (freezing and cussing) to fix it. This was at 5 a.m. I should have just stayed up and made a fire or something at that point. There was no going back to sleep from there.

Oh, I almost forgot… before I started on breakfast, I took the dogs out to their pen and opened the door to a beautiful snow/frost mixture that had settled on everything over night. It’s not out of the ordinary for us to get a light dusting of snow on occasion over night, but this was different. The snowflakes clung to the pine needles quite thick and created a pretty cool and scenic view around the yard.

While I’m at it I guess I could catch up on some stuff that took place over the weekend… instead of writing a brand new post that will be higher up on the list than this one.
Les was gone all weekend. So was Kasey (Josh’s wife) so it turned out to be a full on bachelor’s weekend of sorts… minus any bars or strip clubs.
Friday night Josh came up and we cooked some beer brats on the grill and drank some strong dark beers… mmmmm beer. I like beer! And there were chips…. lots and lots of chips.

Ended up staying up late playing Tiger Woods on the Wii.

Needless to say, the next morning was a bit rough. But once we had our wits about us and the hangover had started to subside… we went out for a hike… on snow shoes… with our cameras.

The weather turned out to be just about perfect. When we started the hike it was in the high teens and the wind was harsh, but higher we went in elevation, the calmer the wind got and the warmer it felt.
Afterwards, we proceeded back down the hill and in to Golden where we wrapped up the night with some great pizza from Woody’s Wood Fired Pizza. The $8.99 all you can eat pizza buffet is one of the better “finds” I’ve had in a while. Definitely plan to visit there again real soon.

Took it easy on Sunday and watched some sports!
Overall… good weekend!